RUSHBROOKE, Robert (1779-1845), of Rushbrooke Hall, Suffolk

Rushbrooke, described as one of the ‘old true blue members’ of the Suffolk Conservative party, was descended from the ancient Scottish family of Scotland de Rushbrooke, who had settled in Rushbrooke village, near Bury St. Edmunds, shortly after the Norman conquest.1Essex Standard, 25 June 1841; B. Burke, A genealogical and heraldic dictionary of the landed gentry of Great Britain and Ireland for 1852 (1852), 1160-1. His father, Robert, a barrister, had inherited the West Stow estates in Suffolk through the marriage of Barham Rushbrooke (1720/1-1782), this Member’s grandfather and also a barrister, to Elizabeth Edwards, the daughter and heir of John Edwards (1748/9-1794), of West Stow.2J. Gage, J. Gage Rokewood and S. Bentley, The history and antiquities of Suffolk: Thingoe Hundred (1838), 138. His father’s ultimate ambition, however, had been to secure Rushbrooke Hall, which had long been in the possession of the earls of Bristol. He achieved this, somewhat circuitously, by exchanging, in 1795, West Stow Hall for Little Saxham, then owned by Charles Cornwallis, 1^st Marquess Cornwallis, knowing that the Bristol family wished to acquire the latter. The hoped for exchange of estates eventually occurred in 1808 upon Rushbrooke’s marriage to Frances Davers, the daughter of the 5^th earl of Bristol’s uncle, Sir Charles Davers, MP for Bury St. Edmunds, 1774-1802, who had resided at Rushbrooke until his death in 1806.3Ibid. After graduating from Cambridge in 1801, Rushbrooke eschewed the legal career followed by his father and grandfather, and entered the West Suffolk militia as a captain in 1803. He was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the Babergh battalion of the Suffolk local militia in 1809 and, from his seat at Rushbrooke, established himself as a liberal and generous landlord.4Ipswich Journal, 28 June 1845. He also pursued his love of woodcarving, restoring the sixteenth-century interior of Rushbrooke church.5http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-284474-church-of-st-nicholas-rushbrooke-with-ro.

At the 1835 general election Rushbrooke was put up by the local Conservative party for Suffolk West, home to his estates.6Bury and Norwich Post, 7 Jan. 1835. He presented himself as a zealous defender of the agricultural interest and called for a repeal of the malt tax, declaring that he ‘hoped to see the day when the cottager might enjoy his home-brewed beverage with his wife and children, and not be driven to the ale-house while his family were starving at home’.7Ibid., 21 Jan. 1835; Parliamentary test book (1835), 139. After a hard fought contest that was dominated by the issue of agricultural relief, he was returned in second place.8Bury and Norwich Post, 21 Jan. 1835.

A frequent attender, Rushbrooke voted with Peel on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, the address, 26 Feb. 1835, and Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, the issue on which the short-lived Conservative ministry was brought down. Thereafter he followed Peel into the division lobby on all major issues, backed Chandos’s motion on agricultural relief, 25 May 1835, and voted against the ballot, 7 Mar. 1837. He called for a reduction in the duty on spirits in Scotland, 14 Aug. 1835, and spoke in defence of the Stowmarket poor law guardians, who had been accused by Thomas Wakley, MP for Finsbury, of ill-treating those receiving indoor relief, 1 Aug. 1836. He was an active member of the 1836 select committee on turnpike trusts and tolls.9PP 1836 (547), xix. 336. Rushbrooke also sat on the 1839 select committee on turnpike trusts: PP 1839 (295), ix. 370.

At the 1837 general election Rushbrooke defended his conduct during ‘three years hard labour’ in the Commons.10Ipswich Journal, 5 Aug. 1837. He drew particular attention to his vote against the importation foreign bonded corn to be ground into biscuits for export, 21 Mar. 1837, a measure which he characterised as the thin end of the wedge for corn law repeal.11Ibid., 29 July 1837. He also scolded the Whig government for their attitude towards the rural interest. He was comfortably re-elected in second place.12Ibid., 5 Aug. 1837. He continued to oppose all attempts to modify the corn laws and spoke out against the processing of foreign bonded corn for export, warning that ‘more ... in this measure was meant than met the ear’, 20 Mar. 1838. Apart from that brief intervention, though, he was silent in debate. He voted against the abolition of capital punishment, 5 Mar. 1840, supported John Plumptre’s anti-Maynooth motion, 23 June 1840, and backed Peel’s motion of no confidence in the Whig ministry, 4 June 1841.

Rushbrooke focused his campaign speeches at the 1841 general election on ‘what is of paramount interest to us, the question of the corn laws’. He lamented the absence of a reference to the agricultural interest in the royal speech and described the policy of a fixed duty on corn as ‘delusive’.13Ibid., 10 July 1841. He was re-elected without opposition. Finding his feet in his third Parliament, he spoke more frequently and at greater length in debate, though he generally confined his contributions to local matters. He argued vociferously against the disenfranchisement of the notoriously corrupt borough of Sudbury, declaring that the measure would punish the vast majority of innocent voters, 10 May, 1 June 1842. He successfully moved for a new writ for Ipswich, 26 May 1842, but his attempts to do the same for Sudbury were ultimately frustrated. Describing the constituency as ‘this unfortunate and persecuted town’, he insisted that the case for widespread corruption had not been made, 12 June 1844, citing the recent decision of the Lords to throw out the bill to disenfranchise the borough.14Hansard, 12 June 1843, vol. 69, cc. 1341-54. However, his direct appeal to Peel failed, 12 June 1844, and his subsequent motion for a new writ was defeated by 138 votes to 25, 1 Aug. 1844. His private request to Peel in March 1843 to secure him a government post was also unsuccessful.15Add 40476, ff. 233-6.

Rushbrooke’s most noteworthy contributions to debate concerned the spate of arson attacks that swept rural Suffolk in the summer of 1844. Responding to the assertions made by a Times correspondent who had linked the incendiarism to the plight of the rural poor in the county, which he dismissed as ‘lame, crude, and impotent conclusions’, Rushbrooke strenuously denied that Suffolk’s agricultural labourers were in distress and insisted that they ‘had never been so well fed or so well clothed as they were at the present time’, 26 June 1844. The Times correspondent subsequently attacked Rushbrooke for basing his conclusions not on statistical evidence but the ‘after dinner orations’ of the president of the Bury St. Edmunds Conservative Association.16The Times, 4 July 1844. Unabashed, Rushbrooke continued to assert that the fires were caused neither by want of education nor poor wages, and warned his fellow MPs not to ‘fan the flames’ of conspiracy by suggesting that there was a ‘deep-laid scheme’ behind the Suffolk arson attacks.17Hansard, 13 July 1844, vol. 76, cc. 765-6; 19 July 1844, vol. 76, c. 1111. His passion for restoring churches was evident when he sat on the 1844 select committee on repairing St. Margaret’s church in Westminster.18PP 1844 (474), vi. 808.

Rushbrooke’s voting behaviour in the Commons during Peel’s second administration merits a close examination. One study places him among a group of 26 Conservative MPs who backed Peel on the sugar duties in June 1844 but had ‘formidable records of previous opposition’.19D. Fisher, ‘Peel and the Conservative party: the sugar crises of 1844 reconsidered’, Historical Journal (1975), xviii. 295. There is certainly substance to this claim. He opposed Peel on the ecclesiastical courts bill, 28 Apr. 1843, and the dissenters’ chapels bill, 28 June 1844. He did, though, vote with Peel on the main clauses of the 1844 factories bill. He backed the premier’s sliding scale on corn duties, 9 Mar. 1842, but resisted all further attempts to modify the existing corn laws. His motion to postpone a reading of the bonded corn bill was heavily defeated, 20 July 1842, and after condemning the Canada corn bill, which he feared would lead to an ‘untold inundation’ of Canadian flour, he voted in the minority against the legislation, 26 May 1844. In February 1844 he was part of an agricultural deputation that met with Peel to ask that the rural interest receive a share of any future remission of taxation.20The Times, 11 Feb. 1844. He voted against corn law repeal, 26 June 1844. Significantly, he remained implacably opposed to the Maynooth grant. He voted against its renewal, 19 July 1844, opposed the college’s permanent endowment, 18 Apr. 1845, and, in his last known vote, was one of a small hardcore group of 46 MPs who voted for postponement, 2 June 1845.

Although he was a more active Member in his third Parliament, Rushbrooke’s finances had been sharply depleted when, along with over fifty other well-to-do investors, he fell victim to an unscrupulous financial ‘adventurer’.21J. Taylor, Boardroom scandal: the criminalization of company fraud in nineteenth century Britain (2013), 74-5. Thomas Saunders Cave, a failed mining speculator, had obtained a considerable subscription from Rushbrooke, and though the Cornish mines existed, they were disastrously unproductive. Cave, living the high life, bankrupted himself, leaving Rushbrooke and his fellow investors who had lost £368,000 but declined to pursue a criminal prosecution, deeply out of pocket.22Ibid.; The Times, 15 Dec. 1841. The lost hurt Rushbrooke both financially and personally. According to one report, the affair ‘finally destroyed him’.23Ipswich Journal, 28 June 1845.

Rushbrooke died at his Suffolk seat after a short illness in June 1845.24The Times, 19 June 1845. He was remembered as an example of ‘strict and self-denying integrity’, whose house and habits ‘savoured more of the “olden time”’.25Ipswich Journal, 28 June 1845. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Robert Frederick Brownlow (1814-70), a major in the Scots fusilier guards. A small selection of Rushbrooke’s correspondence with Peel is held by the British Library, London.26Add 40476, ff. 233-6.